Unfortunately, Austin has lately not been the good sailing venue it used to be. Owing to drought, Lake Travis is down to a mere puddle, the boat ramps are unusable, and the Austin Yacht Club has had to cancel some regattas.

But at least Austin sailors have plenty of places to drown their sorrows -- and very little population to compete with for those places.

Actually, the University of Texas at Austin is just north of that zip code with 50,000 thirsty students, plus hundreds of thousands of other drought-parched Austenites.

One particularly good thing is that downtown Austin also has a thriving, progressive, excellent music and club scene. Some Austin residents don't event particularly seem to realize they dwell in the capitol of Texas.

I think some rains have helped ease the lake crisis slightly, but the lake has a way to go before most of the ramps become usable. During the summer, the Austin Yacht Club was more or less reduced to racing dinghies (even perhaps very small craft such as Laser-like things; that's how much a crisis it was for would-be-big-thinking Texans).

The lake is still down, but it's up about eighteen feet from where it was--was out racing on it this very afternoon in a big keelboat and didn't run aground at all, in fact a couple of our permanent marks are barely sticking out of the water right now. But yeah, this summer was Sunfish time.

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